Month: January 2022

Xi Loyalist Ding Xuexiang Could Benefit From Factional Infighting

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Advertisement With space tightening and purges intensifying, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) core is likely to enjoy the safest passage through to the 20th Party Congress this fall. Ding Xuexiang is concurrently CCP General Secretary Office director and Central Committee General Office director. This means he runs Xi Jinping’s office, working with him day to day, as well as being in charge of keeping the Central Secretariat in line. General Office secretary is a bit like a party whip in a Westminster Parliamentary democracy system. Policy-wise, Ding is the perfect…

Video of Mentally Ill Woman Chained in Shack Stirs Anger in China

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The video was seemingly everywhere on the Chinese internet: A middle-aged woman standing in a doorless brick shack, a dazed expression on her face, wearing no coat though it was the middle of winter. Around her neck was a metal chain, shackling her to the wall. The brief clip, posted by a blogger on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok, raised many questions, and social media users demanded answers. Who was she? Why was she locked up? And under what circumstances had she given birth to the eight children living in…

China’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Anti-corruption Campaign Snares Former Hangzhou Party Secretary

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Advertisement Nearly 10 years in, the Chinese Communist Party’s campaign to rid itself of bad elements has by no means abated. This month, a former Hangzhou party secretary was denounced for financial malfeasance, and officials in Beijing and Henan are being investigated over mismanagement of public safety. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) last Wednesday announced the expulsion from the party and government of former Hangzhou Party Secretary Zhou Jiangyong. At the conclusion of a five-month investigation, the CCDI declared the 54-year-old Zhou had “acted against the Central Committee’s…

Rise in Covid cases slows manufacturing in China to weakest in two years

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Output from China’s manufacturing sector slowed to its weakest in almost two years in January as the country’s tough anti-Covid measures forced factories into temporary shutdowns. A monthly snapshot of industry in the world’s second biggest economy showed production being hard hit by Beijing’s zero-tolerance approach to the pandemic. The Caixin/Markit purchasing managers’ index dropped from 50.9 in December to 49.1 in January – putting pressure on China’s policymakers to step up support for the flagging economy. A reading below 50 suggests output is contracting rather than expanding, with January’s…

China Will Struggle to Escape the Fallout of Zero-COVID

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Advertisement The U.K., Netherlands, and Denmark recently announced that they will abandon most of their COVID-19 containment efforts, in a move that could mark the start of a turning point in the pandemic. These countries appear to view the virus as just another seasonal ailment that, while dangerous to a small segment of the population, is a mild to medium annoyance for most. The implicit acknowledgement is that the “greater good” of resuming normal social and economic life outweighs the risk of death and severe disease to a small minority…

Omicron Surge in Asia Restricts Travel for Lunar New Year

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The Omicron variant has dampened the plans of tens of millions of people across several Asian countries to travel during the Lunar New Year, as officials battle the pandemic for a third year. Observed this year on Feb. 1, Lunar New Year falls just as many countries are seeing surges in coronavirus cases. Omicron is becoming the dominant variant in countries like South Korea, which expects up to 90 percent of its cases to be Omicron-related by the end of February. Before the pandemic, as many as three billion trips…

‘Everyone’s Looking for Plastic.’ As Waste Rises, So Does Recycling.

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DAKAR, Senegal — A crowd of people holding curved metal spikes jumped on trash spilling out of a dump truck in Senegal’s biggest landfill, hacking at the garbage to find valuable plastic. Nearby, sleeves rolled up, suds up to their elbows, women washed plastic jerrycans in rainbow colors, cut into pieces. Around them, piles of broken toys, plastic mayonnaise jars and hundreds of discarded synthetic wigs stretched as far as the eye could see, all ready to be sold and recycled. Plastic waste is exploding in Senegal, as in many…

Beijing seals off several communities over two cases of Covid-19

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Beijing officials have sealed off several residential communities north of the city centre after two cases of Covid-19 were found as the Chinese capital prepares to host the Winter Olympics opening ceremony on Friday. Another 34 cases were confirmed among athletes and others who have come for the Games, the organising committee said. In all, 211 people have tested positive among more than 8,000 who had arrived by the end of Saturday. They include a Swedish cross-country skier and a snowboarder from Slovenia. Everyone coming for the Olympics is being…

Winter Olympics: How will the Covid bubbles work?

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Beijing is set to become the first city ever to host both the Summer and Winter Olympics. This time round, despite the government’s commitment to a zero-Covid strategy, the Omicron variant is spreading. So Games organisers have designed enormous, strict separation bubbles across the city and beyond. Nearly 20,000 volunteers will work alongside armies of security staff to help implement these bubbles. The BBC’s China correspondent Stephen McDonell shows how it will all work. Filmed and edited by Joyce Liu BBC

Sport, politics and Covid collide at the Beijing Winter Olympics

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Hosting the Winter Olympics during a pandemic was always going to test the Chinese government, by putting its ever-growing ability to exercise political control and virus containment on a collision course with its enthusiasm for international prestige and status. The 2022 Winter Games, which open on Friday, are being held at a time of particularly intense western criticism of China over human rights abuses, from the mass persecution of Uyghurs in far western Xinjiang – labelled a genocide by the United States – and other groups including Tibetans, to the…